25 Facts You Always Believed That Actually Aren’t True

You probably thought the Earth revolves around the Sun right? Read on to see how wrong you are. These are 25 facts you always believed that actually aren’t true.

25. The Earth isn’t actually orbiting around the Sun. It’s orbiting around the Solar System’s center of mass known as the Barycenter. Although this point often falls within the mass of the Sun, it can be shifted by the pull of larger planets. Therefore, at least some of the time, everything in the solar system is orbiting around empty space

24. Your tongue does not have different regions dedicated to different tastes. Every taste can be sensed on every part of the tongue

23. Picking up baby birds and returning them to their nests will not cause their mothers to reject them

22. Sugar doesn’t actually make you hyper, and yes the idea of a “sugar rush” is mythical. According to recent science it’s all a placebo effect (Yale University)

21. Chameleons don’t change their color to blend in to their surroundings. They change their color to communicate.

20. Napoleon was actually taller than the average Frenchman

19. Vikings didn’t have horns on their helmets

18. Chewing gum doesn’t take 7 years to digest. It actually can’t be digested at all and will pass right through you as is.

17. Red heads and blondes aren’t going extinct. They are becoming more rare as the world population increases but in order to go extinct every single person carrying redhead genes would have to die or not reproduce.

16. No bat is blind. While many species do use echolocation, some have excellent night vision and don’t rely on echolocation at all.

15. Life expectancy in the middle ages wasn’t as low as you think. The average age was brought down but that was mostly because of a high infant mortality rate. Most adults lived well into their 60s.

14. Your fingers don’t wrinkle because they absorbed water. They wrinkle because your brain tells them to. Why though? No one is sure.

13. The Coriolis effect doesn’t actually change the direction the toilet flushes. It only affects large bodies of water. If your toilet flushes backwards its because the water enters the toilet backwards.

12. There is no such thing as a banana tree. It’s a banana plant.

11. Goldfish don’t have a 3 second memory. It’s actually much better than that.

10. Sharks actually do get cancer

9. Cracking your knuckles won’t lead to arthritis

8. You can see the pyramids from farther away in space than you can see the Great Wall of China (which cannot even be seen from the International Space Station)

7. Dropping a penny from the top of the Empire State Building would not kill someone

6. Fingernails and hair do not continue to grow after death. The surrounding skin will start to recede, however, so it may appear as though they are growing.

5. A duck’s quack does in fact echo (yes, there are people out there who believe it doesn’t)

4. Dogs don’t sweat through their tongue. Most of their sweat glands are located in their foot pads. While panting does keep them cool, panting is not equivalent to sweating.

3. While the Supreme Court did rule that tomatoes are vegetables in the legal sense for the purpose of taxation (Nix vs Hedden), they did not claim they are vegetables in any botanical sense. They are still fruits.

2. Poinsettias are not lethal. They may upset your pet’s stomach but they won’t kill anything.

1. The color orange was named after the fruit and not the other way around